


Barbara

by whatwecan



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Intentional failure of the reverse Bechdel test, Mansplaining, Non-Graphic Violence, Other, Toxic Masculinity, heterosexual dating for nefarious purposes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 03:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatwecan/pseuds/whatwecan
Summary: A bit of a follow up to Every Vow You Break, DJ Anderson a writer goes on a date with a lavender haired woman named Billie during a crucial time in his mother's life.





	Barbara

The thing you need to understand about David (DJ) Anderson, is that he’s a writer. Not a writer of fan fiction like the work you are currently reading, but a real writer.

DJ is currently working on a novel about the emotional turmoil and disaffection of a young man who’s mother dies tragically of cancer at a very crucial time in his life. Whether or not his mother dies at a very crucial time in her own life is unknown.

Perhaps, now that her last child is out of the house, she finally has the time to take that Russian class at the local community college that she’d had her eye on for so long. Perhaps she’s finally taken a lover. Perhaps she was in the middle of purchasing a biv sack (which is like a sleeping bag/ tent hybrid) so she could hike the PCT this summer when, on a whim, she went to readjust her bra and felt a lump. _I should go see Doctor Morgen and have that checked_ , she might have thought.

We’ll never know because DJ’s novel does not include any of these details.

I couldn’t even tell you the mother’s name, which is Barbara. The only reason I know this is because this story is a work of fan fiction and not serious literature, and therefore I can fill in the gaps in the narrative.

The protagonist of DJ’s novel is a young man who is deep and sensitive. The kind of man who looks at the world just a little bit differently, if you know what I mean.

For example, there may be a crack in the sidewalk in front of your house that you walk past everyday. You probably have never noticed it, or stopped to look at it closely. Perhaps you’ve even spit gum on it.

Now, if DJ’s protagonist were to see that same crack he’d notice the indescribably delicate way the fissure snaked through the concrete, and he’d see the saffron hued dandelion (which you or I would describe merely as “yellow”) as it reached vainly to the sun. Our protagonist would think on how all things good in this world are fleeting, and yet we are surrounded by such aching beauty.

I expect that there were many nights when Barbara would sit up late waiting for her husband to come home from the office, and when he did she’d say “I’m very worried about our protagonist son. He seems so unhappy. Do you remember husband, when he was only first starting to walk, how we would take him to the shore and we would strip him down to just his diaper and let his little toes touch the water? It was so cold. But he squealed and laughed like anything. Now it seems as if the more he grows into his place as a man in this world, the more twisted and miserable he becomes. I haven’t seen him smile in so long, and it just breaks my heart.”

It is likely that when DJ finishes his novel, the protagonist will have committed suicide by flinging himself off the bridge his father used to take him to as a child for purposes which DJ, the author, has not yet nailed down. However it is also possible that the long verbose plummet off the bridge which DJ is planning to write is simply a metaphor. If so, it flew completely over my head.

However, no writer, even one as skillful and insightful as DJ, can spend the entirety of their time writing. So today DJ is on a date with a lavender haired woman named Billie.

The date is going well.

Billie is not like other girls and DJ likes that, and she leans in engagingly when he explains to her that the driving themes of his novel are loss and abandonment. DJ himself has experienced a fair share of loss and abandonment, even though his own mother has not died tragically at a very crucial point in his life. In fact, she was one of the first people to review his last novel when he’d self published it on Amazon.

But, as you are doubtless aware, tragically dead mothers are not the only way a man can experience neglect, nor the only way in which women can leave men when they’d very much rather they wouldn’t.

And so, this date with Billie was a first date.

They’d met online and messaged for a while, chatting about their favorite books (him: Catcher In the Rye, her: The Bell Jar) , before agreeing to meet in person. DJ suggested his favorite coffee shop, and afterwards a visit to a local quirky site he’d discovered on Atlas Obscura, and Billie had readily agreed.

DJ thought that Billie seemed like the kind of girl that would enjoy Ethiopian food so he began to explain it to her, how you eat with your hands and can’t use a fork or it’s insulting to the restaurant owner, even though they of course have forks for people who don’t understand the culture.

“I like Tej” she says, “We used to drink it sometimes when I lived in the international house in college. My friend Semra…”

Since she’s interested, DJ cuts Billie off to explain the history of Ethiopian honey wine and how to tell the good stuff from the bad. She smiles encouragingly and he feels glad that he is so knowledgable about so many diverse subjects and can impress her.

As they finish their coffee Billie suggests they walk to the quirky museum of oddities that DJ had planned as their next amusement. It’s not far, although they’ll have to cross over the river via the foot path that hangs under the commuter bridge.

“I’m not sure if you’re interested in random stuff like this,” Billie says, “but there’s this metal sculpture of a troll hidden under the bridge. They say it was put there secretly by some welder when he was doing repairs, and by the time they found it to was too late to take it off. It’s pretty cool.”

DJ is indeed interested in random stuff like that, and so they agree to walk.

As they near the halfway point of the footpath, Billie points to a spot of railing.

“If you lean over right here, you should be able to see the troll.”

DJ peers over the ledge scanning the long steel girders for the figure, but he’s blinded by something bright and shiny, a bit of steel so polished that he can see his own face hanging upside down.

“See it?” Billie asks, “It’s way down there.”

Not wanting to miss out, DJ stretches a little further.

Water is a substance that usually quite yielding, flowing like a jiu jitsu master around any solid object that comes hurtling at it. It is also beautiful, like a beautiful woman who gazes down on you from a bridge as she removes a lavender wig, her face passive where you might have thought it would be cruel. Like water, a woman can also be reflective, often more of your own desires than her own.

However, it is a sad fact that from a certain height, say 250 feet, water is not yielding, It slams into a falling object like a concrete wall. Anyone lucky enough to survive such a fall would surely be knocked unconscious anyway, only to be swallowed by the cold currents and drown.

Water is a bitch like that.

And so DJ’s story ends unfinished, both in the sense that his novel is now very unlikely to be picked up by a major publishing house, and also in all the unrealized potential that his mother (whose name is also Barbara) saw in him.

It is possible that hearing the news of DJ’s death on the bridge will nearly break the poor woman. She’s been sleeping poorly lately and sometimes she looks in the mirror and barely recognizes herself.

 _Where has the time gone_ , she wonders.

But her son, now that he’s more settled and she doesn’t need to worry about him so much, he’s such a bright spot in her life. I worry about Barbara, I do.

Then again, it might have just been a metaphor after all.


End file.
